1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to the recording, storage, and playing back of audio and video data.
2. Description of the Related Art
VHS, VCD and DVD players provide the current standards for connecting to televisions for the playback and recording of audio/video formats. These systems require tape or disk media and a specific recorder/player to encode or decode the various audio/video formats. However, the technology for the media keeps changing and also the encoding and decoding methods keep changing.
It would be desirable to have a recording/playback media incorporating a standard USB interface that would be compatible with consumer electronics products (such as televisions) as well as PC products. It would be desirable for the media to be programmable by the user to allow the flexibility of changing the encoding and decoding of audio/video formats. Such a media would eliminate the incompatibility of media with players and the incompatibility of the audio/video formats the with the player system.
In particular, the High-Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) Standard is positioned to become the dominant standard in the consumer electronics sector. The HDMI Standard is defined in the “High-Definition Multimedia Interface Specification, Informal Version 1.0”, published Sep. 4, 2003. It would be especially desirable to provide a media for providing compatibility between this HDMI consumer electronics standard and computer standards such as USB.